Sunday, April 17, 2011

⅏Did You Know - Lincoln Dreamt About a Presidential Assassination?

Did You Know...

Lincoln dreamt about a presidential assassination..

A photograph of the President and Thomas (Tad) made by Mathew B. Brady on February 9, 1864

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According to the recollection of one of his friends, Ward Hill Lamon, President Abraham Lincoln dreams on the night of April 4, 1865 of "the subdued sobs of mourners" and a corpse lying on a catafalque in the White House East Room. In the dream, Lincoln asked a soldier standing guard "Who is dead in the White House?" to which the soldier replied, "The President. He was killed by an assassin." Lincoln woke up at that point. On April 11, he told Lamon that the dream had "strangely annoyed" him ever since. Ten days after having the dream, Lincoln was shot dead by an assassin while attending the theater.

Did You Know? For the month of

back in.....

1824, Lord Byron died in Greece. George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, dies in what is now Greece, where he had traveled to support the Greek struggle for independence from Turkey. Even today, he is considered a Greek national hero.

1912. RMS Titanic hit iceberg. Just before midnight in the North Atlantic, the RMS Titanic fails to divert its course from an iceberg, ruptures its hull, and begins to sink. Because of a shortage of lifeboats and the lack of satisfactory emergency procedures, more than 1,500 people went down in the sinking ship or froze to death in the icy North Atlantic waters. Most of the approximately 700 survivors were women and children. A number of notable American and British citizens died in the tragedy, including the noted British journalist William Thomas Stead and heirs to the Straus, Astor, and Guggenheim fortunes. The announcement of details of the disaster led to outrage on both sides of the Atlantic. The sinking of the Titanic did have some positive effects, however, as more stringent safety regulations were adopted on public ships, and regular patrols were initiated to trace the locations of deadly Atlantic icebergs.

1944, Explosion on cargo ship rocks Bombay, India. The cargo ship Fort Stikine explodes in a berth in the docks of Bombay, India, killing 1,300 people and injuring another 3,000 on this day in 1944. As it occurred during World War II, some initially claimed that the massive explosion was caused by Japanese sabotage; in fact, it was a tragic accident. The Fort Stikine was a Canadian-built steamship weighing 8,000 tons. It left Birkenhead, England, on February 24 and stopped in Karachi, Pakistan, before docking at Bombay. The ship was carrying hundreds of cotton bales, gold bullion and, most notably, 300 tons of trinitrotoluene, better known as TNT or dynamite. Inexplicably, the cotton was stored one level below the dynamite, despite the well-known fact that cotton bales were prone to combustion.

1946, Arthur Chevrolet committed suicide. Arthur Chevrolet, an auto racer and the brother of Chevrolet auto namesake Louis Chevrolet, commits suicide in Slidell, Louisiana. Louis Chevrolet was born in Switzerland in 1878, while Arthur's birth year has been listed as 1884 and 1886. By the early 1900s, Louis and Arthur, along with their younger brother Gaston, had left Europe and moved to America, where they became involved in auto racing. In 1905, Louis defeated racing legend Barney Oldfield at an event in New York. Louis Chevrolet's racing prowess eventually caught the attention of William C. Durant, who in 1908, founded General Motors (GM). Chevrolet began competing and designing cars for GM's Buick racing team. In 1911, Chevrolet teamed up with William Durant to produce the first Chevrolet car. The two men clashed about what type of car they wanted, with Durant arguing for a low-cost vehicle to compete with Henry Ford's Model T and Chevrolet pushing for something more high-end. In 1915, Chevrolet sold his interest in the company to Durant and the following year the Chevrolet Motor Company became part of General Motors.

1967, GM celebrated its 100 millionth U.S.-made car. On April 21, 1967, General Motors (GM) celebrates the manufacture of its 100 millionth American-made car. At the time, GM was the world's largest automaker. General Motors was established in 1908 in Flint, Michigan, by horse-drawn carriage mogul William Durant. In 1904, Durant invested in the Buick Motor Company, which was started in 1903 by Scottish-born inventor David Dunbar Buick. Within a few years of forming his company, Buick lost control of it and sold his stock, which would later be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. (In 1929, Buick died at age 74 in relative obscurity and modest circumstances). Durant made Buick Motors the cornerstone of his new holding company, General Motors, then acquired Oldsmobile, Cadillac and Reliance Motor Company, among other auto and truck makers.

1973, "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree" topped the U.S. pop charts and created a cultural phenomenon.The yellow ribbon— has long been a symbol of support for absent or missing loved ones. There are some who believe that the tradition of the yellow ribbon dates back as far as the Civil War era, when a yellow ribbon in a woman's hair indicated that she was "taken" by a man who was absent due to service in the United States Army Cavalry. But research by professional folklorists has found no evidence to support that story. The Library of Congress itself traces the cultural ubiquity of this powerful symbol to the well-known song by Tony Orlando and Dawn: "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree," which topped the U.S. pop charts on April 21,1973.

1993, Branch Davidian compound burned. At Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launches a tear-gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound, ending a tense 51-day standoff between the federal government and an armed religious cult. By the end of the day, the compound was burned to the ground, and some 80 Branch Davidians, including 22 children, had perished in the inferno.

1995, Truck bomb exploded in Oklahoma City. Just after 9 a.m., a massive truck bomb explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The blast collapsed the north face of the nine-story building, instantly killing more than 100 people and trapping dozens more in the rubble. Emergency crews raced to Oklahoma City from across the country, and when the rescue effort finally ended two weeks later the death toll stood at 168 people killed, including 19 young children who were in the building's day-care center at the time of the blast. On April 21, the massive manhunt for suspects in the worst terrorist attack ever committed on U.S. soil by an American resulted in the capture of Timothy McVeigh, a 27-year-old former U.S. Army soldier.

1999, A massacre at Columbine High School. Two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, south of Denver. At approximately 11:19 a.m., Dylan Klebold, 18, and Eric Harris, 17, dressed in trench coats, began shooting students outside the school before moving inside to continue their rampage. By 11:35 a.m., Klebold and Harris had killed 12 fellow students and a teacher and wounded another 23 people. Shortly after noon, the two teens turned their guns on themselves and committed suicide.

The crime was the worst school shooting in U.S. history (until 33 people, including the gunman, were killed in the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007) and prompted a national debate on gun control and school safety, as well as a major investigation to determine what motivated the teen gunmen.

2007, Massacre at Virginia Tech left 32 dead. On April 16, 2007, in one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history, 32 students and teachers die after being gunned down on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University by Seung Hui Cho, a student at the school who later dies from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In the aftermath of the massacre, authorities found no evidence that Cho, who was born in South Korea and moved to America with his family in 1992, had specifically targeted any of his victims. The public soon learned that Cho, described by ex-classmates as a loner who rarely spoke to anyone, had a history of mental-health problems. It was also revealed that angry, violent writings Cho made for certain class assignments had raised concern among some of his former professors and fellow students well before the events of April 16.